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Dead Space 3 Scares Me

Michael Potts | Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Dead Space 3 scares me.

It’s a deep fear – one that hunkers in the pit of your stomach, scratching with a quiet, whispering dread of things to come. It’s that pulsing trepidation to face the next experience, constantly looking over my shoulder to the safe places I’ve left behind.

Dead Space 3 scares the shit out of me.

It scares me with its sounds – the sounds of machine guns, explosions tearing through huge, open set pieces. The sound of the wind ripping past you as you control-free fall through an air pregnant with the wreckage of trains, spacecraft and unmanned transports.

It scares me with its world – a world rife with disease and decay, apparent in the copious, engulfing sea of health packs strewn about haphazardly in every nook, cranny, and hallway. A world where mining equipment, military hardware, and surgical tools all function through the use of the same, omnipresently-littered “ammunition”; A world where the latter seems to have occurred if only to accommodate the former.

It scares me with its pacing – as headshots and taking cover give way to slow crawls through darkened hallways. With every curse I utter as I stop dead in my tracks pulling up my navpoint line after a quickly-progressing shootout.

But most of all it scares me because it doesn’t scare me anymore.

It scares me because I’ve seen this before, the cancerous progression of a series as story, atmosphere, and emotional response drop away, rotting off to reveal the decaying hulk of shooting runs, chest-high-walls and a sense that this world’s Bill Gates and Steve Jobs created the modular ammo clip and retail health pack.

It scares me because this is the future. A future that keeps my mind ever conscious of what I’ve left behind.

About the Author

Mike "Scrimshaw" Potts Mike “Scrimshaw” Potts is a gaming journalist with a short temper and an even shorter attention span. As his nickname suggests, he is both pale and elaborate. He is the world renowned host of the popular segment "Mike on Mic" and the series "Mike Was Right".
Find him @MPScrimshaw and at http://mpscrimshaw.wordpress.com/